Contacts

The Contacts tab holds the people and organizations you deal with — and shows for each one what the archive knows about them: emails, documents, open actions, tasks, events. That is the difference from an address book: the value of a contact here is not the address, but everything attached to it.

A contact is stored in the archive's fact journal, like a document or a task — with a source per field (you, Google, import, AI), with a history (the old number is an older line) and with Ctrl+Z for every click. Nothing is ever deleted: a contact stays attached to its documents and is at most archived.

The tab#

Three columns, from left to right:

• The sidebar: All, People, Organizations, your tags, Duplicates with a count, under From Google the other contacts, Archive.
• The list: name, organization, email, phone, tags — letter anchors at the edge, search as everywhere (/), with type:person, tag: and field:value for every contact field.
• The page: initials or photo, the name in large type, below it chips for email, phone and address with actions (compose email, map, copy), then the form with all fields, the tags, the notes — and From the archive: the most recent conversations with this address (a click opens them in the Mail tab, All emails with … shows all of them), documents with the name, open actions, tasks, events, last contact on ….

Person and organization#

A person has salutation, title, first and last name, middle names, name suffix, nickname, pronouns, an organization (a reference to an organization in your contacts) with job title, department and period, email, phone, address, web, birthday (the year may be missing), language and relations to other contacts.

The name that list and page show is computed from the name parts: first name, middle names, name suffix, last name — the way Google builds it; without these the nickname, then the first email. If you change a name part, the page title follows while you are still editing (as soon as you leave the field or press Return), the list after saving. You don't set a name of your own in the form; the contacts manager writes the computed one to the journal as display_name.

An organization has name, legal form, industry, email, phone, address, web, VAT ID, tax number, IBAN, BIC and your customer number there. The IBAN is checked (mod 97), the VAT ID against the format of its country.

You add fields of your own in the vocabulary, under # Contact fields (sprechzeiten: text, types text, email, phone, address, url, date, reference) — and under # Contact templates, which fields the form shows for a kind of contact (arzt: organization, phone, address, sprechzeiten). A field outside the template stays; a renamed field is a new one, and the check strip warns.

Fields with several values#

Email, phone, address, web and relations can have several values, each with a label: home, work, mobile, fax — or one of your own, which you create under Settings → Contacts. The first value is the preferred one; in the journal the field is one line (value (label); value (label)), readable with any editor.

Phone numbers are read according to the default country (Settings → Contacts: Germany or Sweden): 05251 123456 is then +49 5251 123456, while the familiar spelling is kept for display.

Duplicates and merging#

A contact exists only once — and every way of creating one (by hand, from an email, from an import, from the chat) asks first: does it exist already? The same first and last name means yes; then nothing new is created, the existing one is added to, and you are told where. The same email address or phone number alone is not enough for that — it only makes a suggestion. The sync with Google never merges silently: every Google contact becomes a contact of its own, doubles appear under Duplicates.

The Duplicates view in the sidebar shows the computed candidates at three levels: certain (same first and last name), likely (similar name and the same email, number, organization, the same city or the same email domain), possible (only a similar name, or only the same email or number — spouses often share a landline and a mailbox). The card for each pair puts the fields side by side, with their source; Merge lets one merge into the other (one click, one Ctrl+Z — the old one stays reachable as an alias), Not the same remembers the pair so that it is never suggested again. Merging never happens without a click — not by the AI either, and not by the Google sync.

Connecting Google#

Contacts use the same Google account as Calendar and Mail — with one more permission. Under Settings → Accounts, in this order:

1. Create or unlock the vault, if you haven't yet — the same one as for the calendar, see Calendar, Connecting Google.
2. Provide the client file — the same as for the calendar. New, once, in the Google Cloud Console:
   • under APIs & Services → Library enable the People API,
   • under Google Auth Platform → Data Access add the scope contacts (https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts; Google classifies it as sensitive — for your own account one more warning screen), plus userinfo.profile (name and picture of the account, not sensitive — for your own picture, see Photos). A new client file doesn't need this.
3. grant access … in the Contacts column of the account whose address book you want to see here. The browser opens with the Google sign-in; confirm access to your contacts. The column then says "writes", and the first sync runs: every Google contact becomes a contact of its own. If someone already exists, the pair appears under Duplicates — they are only merged with your click. A contact that already has a certain duplicate at Google is not sent to Google again until then.

You connect a new account with Add account … → Google (mail, calendar, contacts) — the checkbox Contacts requests contacts along with it. Under Settings → Contacts you then find the sync per account (Both directions or Read only), where new contacts go, the import and the display; if no account reads contacts yet, Grant access to contacts … there takes you straight to the sign-in.

The sync runs in both directions (can be switched to Read only per account): what you change here goes to Google; what you change at Google or on your phone comes in as a journal line with source google — so with Ctrl+Z. If both change the same field, the card shows both values and you choose. The user wins: a value you have set yourself is never silently overwritten by Google. Deleting at Google archives here; archiving here does not delete at Google. Photos only come in from Google (see Photos). For your phone, Google is the way into the address book — caller ID then knows your contacts.

Photos#

If a contact has a photo at Google — set in the address book, or the profile picture of their Google account —, the sync fetches it and shows it in the list and on the page, where the initials would otherwise be. Google's placeholder with the initial letter is not a photo; then the initials stay. If you hover over the picture on the page, it says where it comes from ("Photo from Google · address").

• If the photo changes at Google, the new one comes with the next round. If Google removes it, it goes here too.
• A picture of your own (Image from file…, Image from clipboard) is never overwritten by Google. If Google then has a different photo, the header says "1 conflict" — your picture stays. If Google removes its own, yours stays anyway.
• No photo goes out: a picture you set here stays here — it doesn't travel into your Google address book and from there onto every phone.
• A photo from Google appears in the History like any value from Google, with the account as its source.
• At the first start after the update, the sync reads each account in full once (at the bottom of the sidebar "Sync contacts: …") — so the contacts that are already there get their photo too.

Your own picture — the profile picture of your Google account, for you as sender in the Mail tab — is fetched once a day. For that the account needs the permission for the account’s name and picture (profile): an account you connected before 28.09.2026 gets it with Settings → Accounts → Reconnect and the confirmation in the browser.

Organizations: at Google, a person's company is just text. Here it becomes a reference to an organization — the one with the same name, otherwise the sync creates it (source google). It then appears under Organizations and does not go to Google as a contact of its own as long as you change nothing about it. If you rename the organization here, all people at Google who belong to it get the new name.

Issues: what the sync can't take over — a web address without https://, a phone number with letters, a contact without any details — it leaves out as a field or as a contact; the rest of the contact comes in. The header of the tab then says "3 issues", a click shows the sentences, and they are in the log. If you correct the value at Google, it comes with the next round.

Other contacts (Google)#

Gmail remembers by itself every address you write to for the first time — it is then not in your address book, but at Google under Other contacts. Nothing is checked there: the throwaway address of a buyer on a classifieds site, the noreply address of a shop you once replied to, the bounce address of a newsletter are listed there just like people.

The app can read these addresses — only with your consent, per account: under Settings → Accounts, in the Contacts column, other contacts …; Google asks once more in the browser. After that:

• Stored separately: the other contacts are not contacts of the app. They are only on this computer, in a cache that the app refreshes along with the contacts (every 15 minutes, Shift+R at once) — never in the archive, never in the History, never for the AI.
• Checked: every address gets a reason in words, if needed. Filtered out is what surely reaches nobody or accepts no reply — a throwaway domain (according to a maintained, freely usable list of over 9,000 domains that comes with the app), noreply and its relatives, bounce addresses of mailing services. Flagged is what is only suspicious: an address that looks machine-made (a8f3k2j9x7q1m4p6@…), one whose email failed the authenticity check, a brand name on the wrong domain, a domain that resembles a trusted one. If you have written to an address yourself, the flags go away — filtered out stays filtered out.
• Shown in the sidebar under From Google → Other contacts: at the top the suggested ones (those you wrote to first), with a circle — the profile picture from Google, if there is one —, name, address and reason; below them "n filtered out", collapsed, with count and reasons. Return on this row expands it.
• Allow anyway (Shift+Z, until 29.09.2026 Z): a filtered-out address that you need after all then appears among the suggestions again — with its reason. Shift+Z once more takes that back. The decision applies to the whole archive, on every computer.
• Add (U): the address becomes a contact — with name, all usable addresses, phone and photo, through the duplicate check (if the person already exists, they are added to). Ctrl+Z takes it back, and the address is listed among the other contacts again.

When writing an email, the other contacts appear below the address fields in a group of their own, From Google · other contacts, with a cloud, below your contacts — flagged ones with their hint in yellow, filtered-out ones not at all (the line below gives their number). The same applies to the guests of an event. And the circles in the Mail tab show the profile picture from the other contacts where there would otherwise only be initials — never for a filtered-out address.

Import#

Under Settings → Contacts → Import:

• Import vCard/CSV … reads a .vcf (3.0 or 4.0, also many contacts in one file, with photo) or a CSV file from Google or Outlook — the columns are recognized from the header row.
• Adopt from the knowledge notes reads, once, your notes of type entity/person: the name, email aliases (aliases with @), the statements [email], [phone], [organization]. The note stays as it is; it gets kontakt: person:<id> in its frontmatter.

Every import is a proposal card in the AI chat: for each contact new, added to or duplicate, with checkboxes, applied only with your click. Export: Export selection in the tab, as vCard.

Keys#

The area digits: Alt+1 sidebar (opens), Alt+2 list, Alt+3 page — while editing, the first field of the form; also from the form and the search field (Keyboard).

The key bindings follow the mail list and — since 29.09.2026 — the documented keys of Google Contacts (?, A, Ctrl+Return, Z). Superhuman, whose keys the Mail tab knows, has no contact management and so no keys for it; all that comes from it is the idea of showing the latest conversations on a contact's page and finding all emails with them with one click (Shift+M). All keys can be rebound in Settings; the keymap Outlook gives Contacts the keys of Outlook for people (Ctrl+N new, Shift+E edit, Delete archive, Ctrl+E search), No single keys removes all letters.

From the archive on a contact's page lists the five most recent conversations with them — from them or to them; a click opens the conversation in the Mail tab. Below it All emails with …: the same as Shift+M.

Sender and person#

In the Mail tab, the page on the right shows the sender's person from your contacts, if there is one — otherwise Create contact, which goes through the duplicate check. In the To field when composing, suggestions come first from your contacts, then — marked — from Google's other contacts, last from your emails. In the Calendar a guest with an address becomes a person; the Inbox suggests contacts from signatures as a card.

What the AI sees#

The AI chat can search contacts (find_contacts), read one (read_contact), look at the computed duplicates (find_duplicate_contacts) and suggest contacts or a merge (propose_contacts, propose_contact_merge) — applied only with your click.

What it sees in the process is decided by you under Settings → Permissions and access → Visible to the AI: contacts, per field group: by default name, organization and email; phone, address, birthday, notes and other details (bank and tax data, relations, your own fields) only after you check them. A contact with the tag privat never exists for the AI — no checkbox changes that. The limit is set by the program, not by the prompt: what is blocked appears in no answer; only how much is blocked is mentioned.

What is missing#

• CardDAV (Nextcloud, iCloud) — only Google for now.
• Scanning business cards — a scan in the Inbox does not become a contact yet.
• Birthday calendar in the Calendar tab.
• The contact header in the knowledge note — the entity/person note stays optional alongside, without showing the journal data.
• The phone doesn't show contacts yet; the way there is Google.
• Other contacts on the phone — they are only on the computer that fetched them.